For new customers, the insurer has reduced the waiting period from 30 days to 15 for Covid-related claims with no increase in premium.
The new draft guidelines issued by IRDAI proposes a minimum sum assured of Rs 50,000 and a maximum of Rs 5 lakh. A General Insurance Council official said the guidelines were still being worked on and would only be finalised next week.
SBI is expected to mop up almost $202 million via the share sale.
Following suggestion from Minister for Roads Nitin Gadkari, Centre seeks ideas from IRDAI and General Insurance Council on feasibility of providing insurance cover for retrenchment.
Unlike other health insurance policies, which mostly covers hospitalisation expenses alone, the specialised cover is likely to include the cost of treatment during quarantine and payment of cash for incidental expenses.
With vehicular activity picking pace in May, toll collection also saw a huge uptick. Fastags posted an impressive jump of more above 400 per cent in transaction count at 55.17 million, and an over-300 per cent jump in value at Rs 1,142 crore.
The bonds were available for seven years. Since these were not traded in the secondary market, redemption took place at maturity.
For smaller MFIs, resuming operations is more difficult because they haven't got any fresh bank credit sanctioned from their lenders.
Scores of employees took to social media to express disappointment and said they were asked to resign over WhatsApp calls. On Twitter, some said they had been asked to resign by May 31 and that there was no severance package and salary would be paid only for May.
Going by the strict criteria set, only Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana qualify for such extra borrowing, as of now.
In HDFC Life, the company has to pare 1.43 per cent, and in HDFC Ergo, it has to pare only 0.58 per cent.
Such cold-shoulder by banks also indicates a credit freeze that is hard to overcome, unless the government comes out with credit guarantee schemes for loans given by banks. Since that is not happening, and there is no indication of that too, banks are not willing to listen to RBI prodding.
'India's sizeable foreign exchange reserves should serve as a buffer.'
Though NCLT has extended window to find a buyer, bankers don't see much hope of a deal.
The rise in premiums could be in the range of 5-25 per cent, depending on the features that each insurance company adds on its products. Insurance firms have been given time till September 30 to include modifications mandated by the regulator.
While efforts are being mounted on a war footing to arrest its spread, COVID-19 will impact economic activity in India directly through domestic lockdown. The second-round effects, it said, would operate through a severe slowdown in global trade and growth.
Cost of the diagnostic test for Covid-19 has been fixed at Rs 4,500 per test by the government. Hospitals, however, do not think this is feasible.
Payments can be made till April 21; for motor the relaxation is only for third-party insurance.
'Unless it becomes really a big epidemic in India where a huge number of people are getting sick and lakhs of people dying, I do not see a major impact on the insurance sector.'
The RBI on Friday said it will give banks Rs 1 trillion through targeted long-term repo operations (TLTROs), of up to three-year maturity, to deploy in "investment-grade corporate bonds, commercial paper, and non-convertible debentures over and above the outstanding level of their investments in these bonds as of March 27, 2020."